Micro-machined carbon enables the fabrication of carbon micromechanical systems (CMEMS) for application in harsh environments, whereby the chemical inertness of carbon enables it to be utilized in applications encountering high temperature, gamma radiation, X-ray exposure, and neutron affluence exposure. However, conventional fabrication technologies, e.g., CMEMS derived from photoresist precursors, are limited in finding application in full scale production, e.g., only a few devices can be produced at a time at the small single partial wafer level. For example, when forming carbon with a typical pyrolysis process comprising pyrolysis of a photoresist, the photoresist is lithographically patterned prior to pyrolysis, which can result in uncontrollable dimensioning of critical features and device geometries resulting from polymer reflow at elevated processing temperatures. A final cross section of a carbon MEMS beam that is formed by pyrolysis after the beam has been patterned, rather than being rectangular, the cross section has an elliptical or rounded geometry, wherein the rounded geometry can give rise to increased susceptibility to torsional bending modes. Such effects are shown in FIGS. 11 and 12, wherein FIG. 11 is a scanning electron microscope (SEM) image 1100 illustrates a structure having a curved profile 1110 (“air wing”) resulting from reflow during the pyrolysis, and FIG. 12, SEM image 1200 illustrates a plurality of cantilevers 1210A-D that have undergone reflow and have lost the desired rectangular profile. It is apparent that a conventional process of patterning and then pyrolysis, it can be difficult to maintain control over sidewall profiling to achieve small critical dimensions, to facilitate close representation of (correspond to) a finite element analysis model.